Mike Shepherd (1)Rezensionen

Four brief stories that are vignettes from the Kris Longknife universe. Abby has to deal with a major problem on Alwa after Kris leaves her there. Ruthie Longknife's First Christmas is about a visit to Grandpa Al's and the second assassination attempt on the baby. Bad Day is a vignette of Kris's work at the Admiralty when she thought she wanted a more settled life. The other story is about Kris negotiating with ostriches on Alwa.

From college graduate to OCS in three days makes for a big adjustment for Kris Longknife and the Wardhaven Navy.

Meanwhile back at the capital planet while Kris Longknife is off in space trying to put the rebels down, her children Ruth and Johnny are learning and playing with their friends both human and Iteeche. While the grownups are dealing with attempts to disrupt life at the Legation District, the kids just want to go swimming in the Emperor's lake.

They make plans using their computers Daisy and Hippo, who are some of Nelly's children, to find a way to sneak out of the Legation District and find their way to the lake. Unfortunately, they are kidnapped on their way. While the humans and their associated Iteeche are combing the planet for them, Ruth who isn't quite eight-year-old uses her intelligence and the remembered guidance of her mother to find a way to let her Gramma and Grampa know where the kids are.

This was an excellent adventure. I enjoyed getting a look at the next generation of Longknifes who are as intrepid and smart and determined as their forefathers. This story is told from both the viewpoints of Gramma Ruth and young Ruth who is her great-granddaughter.

Having settled business on the Iteeche capital planet, at least for a while, Kris needs to get back out into space to continue the battle against the rebels who are threatening the empire and the life of the teenager on the Imperial throne.

She'd like to add to her fleet and the clans do owe her and their emperor their support. But when she gets nothing but excuses from the major clans, she bypasses them in favor of offering the minor clans a chance at gold and glory or, actually, land and plunder.

But the rebels have not been standing still while Kris was dealing with problems on the capital planet. They have taken back one of the systems Kris had won. Kris plans to continue capturing the rebel planets that are the most able to support the rebel cause. She plans to do it her way. If the planet surrenders to Kris, she'll let the local overlords keep their places which irritates the young lordlings from the capital planet who have been promised land and jobs and opportunities for plunder of their own.

A large part of this story, told both from Kris's point of view and from the Iteeche Admiral leading the rebel fleet, is concerned with a space battle for control of one of the rebel planetary systems. It was filled with action and warfare.

This was another excellent adventure in the Kris Longknife series.

Kris Longknife has been running a very successful campaign against the rebels who want to take over the Iteeche Empire. Some think even too successful. No one thought it would be as easy to capture ships and planets as Kris Longknife makes it look.

Then she is called home to make a report to the emperor and finds all sorts of problems. First of all, she faces delays getting to her embassy in the form of bombs and armed troops. Then she has trouble getting into her embassy which is being surrounded by a million or so protestors who seem way to well organized to be an actual spontaneous demonstration. Bombs and having multi-story buildings dropped on her are not enough to keep her away from her duty which has become finding a way to keep the emperor alive.

I enjoyed seeing the way Kris deals with the Iteeche and life the way she keeps running into ways that the Iteeche are alien in thought and custom. Kris becomes concerned that she won't be able to do what she was brought to the empire to do unless she manages to find a way to change the culture of the Iteeche empire. But that won't stop this Longknife from doing her duty.

This was an exciting episode in the long-running Kris Longknife series which lets everyone know that no one gets in of way of a Longknife who has a duty to perform.

Science Fiction

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Having defeated the rebel battle force intent on taking over the Imperial Capital planet, Kris is tasked with taking the fight to the rebels. She and her crew identify the planets which are the centers of the rebellion and the ones that need to be defeated in order to put down the rebellion.

The first planet chosen doesn't require space battles. They need to find the ruler of the planet and take him out along with his staunchest supporters. This task falls in part to Lieutenant Megan Longknife who has a way of connecting with computers that sometimes runs in the Longknife family. Megan and a small task force use her ability to get into and understand alien computer networks to locate their targets and take them out.

They also have to deal with sabotage of the planetary infrastructure and, in doing so, get to know what some of the rank-and-file Iteeche are like and let them see what humans are like. Kris is determined to do the conquering the human way which is quietly bringing another form of rebellion to the Iteeche empire.

The second planet they choose to take on is the one farthest from the Imperial Capital planet. They weren't expecting to encounter a fleet that outnumbers them by 4-to-1 but using some tactics from human history, including Nelson's at Trafalgar, and hitting a force that hasn't trained to anything like the human led fleet allows them another victory.

And, though the planetary government isn't willing to surrender the planet to the loyal forces, Megan's skills with computers again allows the human led loyal forces to triumph.

This was another entertaining episode in the Kris Longknife series. I'm eager to see more of her efforts to defeat the rebels and bring her own brand of change to the Iteeche Empire.

Admiral Kris Longknife was sent to the seat of the Iteeche Empire as an emissary from humanity but finds herself dragooned into becoming the Admiral of the loyal fleet who must fight against rebel forces to keep the teenaged Emperor on his throne.

She has 36 battlecruisers, the enemy has thousands. She needs to build a force using Iteeche forces and forge them into a fighting force that can win against three-to-one odds. However, all the rebels aren't away from the seat of power, and she has to face attempts against her life and her people right under the Emperor's nose.

Just as she's getting her troops trained to fight in the human way, news comes in that one of her strongest supporters among the Iteeche needs immediate help. His planetary seat is being taken over by the rebels. It would normally take a month to get there, but Kris can use the fuzzy jumps that humans have discovered which will cut the time drastically. So, the combined fleet is gathered and dispatched only to find that the revolt on that planet was a feint to clear her and her forces away from the Imperial seat.

There are no direct fuzzy jumps into the Emperor's planet and when Kris and crew wind up one jump short, they discover a rebel force that outnumbers them five-to-one that they have to keep from making the jump and capturing the Emperor's planet.

The story is filled with space battles and strategies and constant reminders that the Iteeche are aliens and don't think at all the same way that humans do.

It was an exciting story that carries on nicely from Emissary and leads neatly into Commander because it will take more than one battle, no matter how horrendous, to put down the rebellion.

Kris has been getting very tired of her desk job trying to bring the Navy up to her specifications. Sure, she's enjoyed going home each night to her husband and two children, but work is not what she had hoped.

When Ron, the Iteeche Kris knows best, comes from his Emperor asking that Kris be sent as Emissary of her people to the Imperial Court, Kris is intrigued. She knows that this is a big job that she may not be totally qualified for, but she has the encouragement of her king and a free hand to build the team she thinks will help her do the job.

Only things are not as they seem. It seems the Iteeche are in the middle of a civil war which no one thought to mention to Kris. And she has been saddled with the role of being Speaker for Humanity along with assorted ambassadors from most of the human settled worlds who all have differing agendas. This doesn't count the large horde of human merchants who are all looking to get rich as the interact with the Iteeche industrial base.

Then there is the journey which includes an Admiral in command of the escort force who isn't on board with the new Navy Agenda and who needs to be relieved when their convoy is threatened by an Iteeche Rebel space fleet.

And once they get to the planet where the Emperor lives, they have to fight their way to his palace through other forces who don't want them to meet. Once the meeting is achieved, Kris is saddled with another impossible job: the Emperor puts her in charge of his Imperial Navy and wants her to battle the rebels. Unfortunately, they are all equipped with the same ships and tactics as the Imperial Fleet. Kris has never fought a battle of equals. But she's a Longknife and a smart and tricky one.

This book definitely has a cliffhanger ending tempting me to begins Admiral which is the next in the series right now.

Kris has been called home from Alwah because her kingdom, in the person of her great-grandfather King Ray, has a problem for her to solve. The Greenfeld Empire is undergoing a civil war and the emperor has asked for assistance. Since Kris knows the players having met both the Emperor and the Grand Duchess, she's the right person to send in to try to broker a peace.

However, the Empress who is really the power behind the rather clueless Emperor isn't ready to give up power. It was repeated assassination attempts on Grand Duchess Victoria that led her to fleeing the heart of the empire. With Vicky out of the way, it is now Kris and her team who are fending off the assassination attempts.

With many of her former colleagues deciding to stay and build their lives on Alwah, Kris has to assemble a new team. This one consists of negotiators from various fields and their associates because finding a way for the civil war to end with take more than Kris's usual gunboat diplomacy.

Conditions in the Greenfeld empire are awful. Trade and business have been disrupted, planets are facing starvation, and piracy is rampant. The Empress and her faction are willing to ruin everything if it means that she will have the power at the end of it all.

Kris is sent in with a small fleet, but her fleet is the most up to date in space. She doesn't mind that her force will be underestimated. She knows that if needed she can wield her big stick and it will be needed. As her payment, she has demanded a desk job for herself and her husband Jack after this task has been completed. She feels that it is time that someone else becomes the point of the spear for her home planet.

This episode reconnects Kris with Vicky Peterwald who has done a lot of growing up since they were last together. It was an entertaining episode in a long-running series.

In UNRELENTING, Kris and 72 other career military women find themselves pregnant because of a sabotage of their birth control implants. Besides dealing with her pregnancy, Kris has to get ready to face an implacable enemy planning to come at Alwah with overwhelming force.

Kris is also dealing with a near mutiny of the support people who are working to produce the goods Kris needs to fight the war. A section of this story has her putting on her Nuu Enterprises hat and her Viceroy had to work with people to find out how to get the supplies they need and still meet the needs of all of the beings on Alwah.

But the main focus of this one is the battle against four mother ships that are getting ready to come at Alwah with the goal of completely destroying the planet and the people who live on it. Luckily, just as the battle is about to begin, help arrives from King Ray which really beefs up Kris's defense forces.

This was a shoot-em-up episode but didn't stint on quieter moments between Kris and her baby-to-be and Kris and Jack.

So I realized part way into book that I'm no longer interested. Also, the story has them stalled out on a planet while the two main characters get it on, and it's not doing it for me. Anyway, 10 books was more than enough.

Having beaten back the alien attack on Alwah, Kris takes a small fleet to search for the home planet of the alien raiders. There they discover a large pyramid which holds trophies - 412 different planets the raiders have conquered and sterilized. They also find and capture some remnants of the aliens. Kris has always wanted to be able to talk with them, but they have chosen suicide over talk every time Kris has encountered them.

She brings her captured survivors back to Alwah only to arrive just as a ship is fleeing to get back to human space under the command of one of her bitter rivals. While chasing the ship, they discover a new race of beings and an outpost of the aliens.

Kris's small contingent of ships manages to defeat the aliens at the outpost but with heavy losses. Again they capture a small number of the aliens before they can commit suicide. Kris learns just how relentless the enemy is.

She decides to send a couple of ships back home carrying all they have learned about the aliens and a new discovery from Alwah which has great scientific potential, while she waits for the potential alien invasion.

This was entertaining space opera.

Kris managed to save the people of Alwa from attack from an alien force that refuses to communicate and rediscover her own great-grandmother at the same time.

Her great-grampa King Ray comes to try to rescue his long-lost wife who is determined to stick at her new home. He also puts Kris in charge of the Alwa Defense, makes her CEO of Nuu Enterprises, and Viceroy to the human colonists. He's dropped off a number of ships, personnel and supplies. He wants Kris to take on the aliens at least long enough for the rest of humanity to prepare to fight a war against them.

Kris is busy as she can be because Alwa doesn't have an infrastructure. The colonists are on the near course to starvation and not ready to take care of an additional 20,000 personnel who have come to prepare for that battle.

Between building ships, building infrastructure, and dealing with aliens who have no concept of organized warfare, Kris is finding it hard to find time to spend with her new husband Jack.

There were lots of great characters in this one from Kris's core people to those sent to help prepare for war and build a planet. There was also a lot of preparing for and fighting a great battle to defeat the overwhelming number of aliens who have their eyes set on Alwa.

When this story begins, Kris is in command of a fast patrol squadron on a very backward planet. In fact, she is being held there. When she learns that her Grampa Al is planning to equip and send a trade mission to the aliens Kris fought and ran from, she is determined to talk to him and convince him that this is a really, really bad idea. But first she has to escape the "command" she is running.

With the help of Abby and her niece Cara and a variety of friends, Kris finds herself at Wardhaven where she meets up with her Grampa Trouble and Jack, who is the man she loves, but who was sent away from her. She has also gathered her old friend Penny. Along with some other allies, they attempt to infiltrate her Grampa Al's supposedly impenetrable fortress. But her father the Prime Minister has tasked Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile of the Wardhaven Bureau of Investigation to find her and save her life.

Foile and his team which a includes a Kris super fan-girl manage to track her but are always one step behind. But Kris and her compatriots are one step behind Grampa Al too. In order to escape Wardhaven and track down Grampa Al, Kris surrenders herself to a Musashi ship at high Wardhaven even though this means that she will go on trial for her life when she gets to Musashi. Kris just wants a chance to tell her story since she's convinced that her Longknife relatives from King Ray to the Prime Minister are giving the citizens of their planets the straight story about her alien encounter.

I enjoyed all the part of the story that takes place on Musashi from her meeting with the Emperor to her trial. I liked that Kris and her friends are reunited. I liked that the Musashi realize the threat that the aliens present and are willing to help Kris do something about it. I liked that she and Jack have confessed their feelings for each other.

This was an entertaining and exciting episode despite the fact that it ends on a bombshell cliffhanger.

The stakes get higher, and Vicky learns a lot about herself and her allies. Odd place to stop.½

This time Kris might have bitten off more than she can chew. Her plan to take a group of scouts into the unknown to look for the aliens who are eating Iteeche ships, is "improved' by the addition of battleships from Greenfeld, Musashi, and Helvetica - all commanded by Admirals. And Wardhaven has sent a new secret weapon of immense power with her too.

They discover a planetary system where the unknown invaders have killed the population and strip mined the planet of everything including the air. That made them all a bit more cautious, but when they sent survey ships through one jump, they found a mothership the size of a rather large moon and thousands of ships attached bigger than even their battleships.

When they try to get around them to work their way home, they discover another settled alien planet that is in the path of the invaders. Kris proposes reversing by one jump and trying to ambush the invaders as they jump through. This plan has quite a bit of opposition from the Greenfeld delegation who favor running for home and letting the innocent alien planet fend for itself. Kris convinces them that they shouldn't do that, but the battle causes very large losses among the human fleet, and leaves Kris and just a few of her ships running for home chased by invaders.

When Kris does make it home after a harrowing voyage and with many more losses, she finds that she has been convicted in absentia of crimes against humanity. But King Ray and his advisors want to put off any thoughts of a new war until they have more time to win over the people and build up resources.

When the story ends, Kris is being sent off planet again to get her out of the way.

In this episode, newly promoted to Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife has been assigned to the Rim very near the Greenfeld planets to track down pirates, slavers and drug lords.

After tracking down some pirates over Kaskatos, Kris learns that the planet has taken in so many refugees from Greenfeld's New St. Peterburg that everyone on the planet is starving. Kris's mission to hunt pirates has now turned into a humanitarian mission to transport food and other necessities to Kaskatos. And she has to do it in such a way that it doesn't appear to Greenfeld that Wardhaven is making a grab for more territory.

When she goes to New St. Petersburg, she meets old enemies who just might be allies in this case in the persons of Admiral Kratz and Vicky Peterwald. She learns that a lot of the Greenfeld association is in turmoil. Since Vicky's father had most of his secret service killed, it has become an open field for anyone looking for power.

As they team up to hunt for the pirate's base, Abby's niece Cara is kidnapped by slavers and taken to the planet they have been looking for. Now, Kris and her crew have even more incentive to find that and rescue Cara.

This was another great spacer opera episode in Kris Longknife's career.

This was another exciting episode in the Kris Longknife series. Kris and the company on the Wasp are out on the Rim looking for pirates and scientific opportunities. They really don't expect to find an ambassador from their former enemies the Iteeche who is looking for help from Grampa Ray.

As Kris and crew get to know Ron'sum Pin'sum qu Chap'sumWe, they learn more about the war that ended more than eighty years earlier. Unfortunately, there are still military veterans of that war on both sides including Kris's Greatgrandpa Ray who have very strong hatred for the Iteeche. Which means that she needs to sneak Ron and company back to Wardhaven so that he can meet with King Ray and lay out his needs.

They take a brief detour on the way to Wardhaven to see Kris's Aunt Tru because her computer Nelly is developing some questionable characteristics. She seems to be developing a real mind of her own which is causing Kris some problems.

Once they get to Wardhaven, things don't go very well. Ray says essentially "I'll think about it," sends Ron and his entourage back home, and sends Kris to Texarkana to solve a political problem. Texarkana happens to be the home of two of Kris's college friends. Kris finds a sticky political situation. The original settlers who are farmers and ranchers are in conflict with later settlers who were industrialists. It seems that someone from outside is trying to stir up even more trouble between the two factions than their own stubbornness is causing. Kris finds herself victim of an assassination attempt on one of her old school friends.

Kris does manage to find a solution to the discord between the two groups using Longknife charisma and Longknife money. But Ron's problem is far from being solved and Kris keeps get pulled away from it by King Ray's needs leaving Ron's problem a dangling plot thread for another book.

Kris Longknife should be far enough away from the centers of civilization to keep out of trouble. Assigned to The Wasp and packed with scientists who are exploring the Rim for new planets and new opportunities should keep her out of politics.

However, just because she's far away doesn't mean she's trouble-free. After all, pirates and slavers like to be away from the center of civilization too. She and her crew capture the Compton Maru and find it filled with cargo and slaves. She takes her captures ship to Cuzco in hopes of selling the cargo and ship for prize money and dumping the pirates on Cuzco' legal system. While there she has a chance to connect with a couple of old enemies - Captain Kratz and newly made Ensign Vicky Peterwald.

While stuck on Cuzco where the legal system makes the pirates look good, Kris and her crew meet Andy Fronour of Pandemonium - one of the illegal colonies beyond the Rim - and are convinced to take him and his cargo home on their way to doing the exploration the scientists are agitating for. Upon arrival, they find that the colony has been captured by another set of pirates hired by businessmen to loot the planet for their profits.

Kris and her crew come to the aid of the first group of colonists in retaking their planet with lots of nice maneuvers which make use of Kris's ingenuity. This second group of pirates is commanded by Kris's own first captain who left the Wardhaven Navy just ahead of his own court martial and who blames Kris for his problems.

After solving problems there, Kris and her crew go to Xanadu which has been settled by Abdicators who were agitating for all humanity to return to Earth to get away from alien hordes that they believed were coming. Only they have gone beyond agitation and have sent out a group of young fanatics to start a war between Wardhaven and the Peterwalds. It is up to Kris to find these terrorists and stop them. Since it is well known to her that a war between parties of equal strength doesn't do much beyond creating a lot of devastation and can have no clear winners.

Now Kris has to find a way to save her and her planet's greatest enemy before they can be edged into outright war.

This story was entertaining science fiction with a larger-than-life main character and many other intriguing characters too.

Kris Longknife has made the Rim too hot for her, so her king and Navy boss send her to New Eden as part of a procurement team. The only problem is that Kris knows there is more to her mission than her superiors told her about.

New Eden is an interesting world. It was one of the first settled when people from Earth began to leave the planet. Kris finds a society that is big on secrets and information security. She also finds a stratified society with the rich, original settlers who have the right to vote and all the others whose ancestors might have come to the planet as indentured servants and whose descendants are still disenfranchised.

The government has a lock on the news. Only good news gets reported in the powerful press. Neither of the two assassination attempts on Kris manage to make the news. Gun control is supposed to be absolute with only hired security services allowed to carry. But the security firms don't advertise and need word of mouth recommendations. Getting a permit to carry for herself, her team and even the Marines at the Embassy is not an easy task.

We also learn that New Eden is Abby's home planet - the one she was very glad to leave fifteen years earlier. As she goes looking for her mother and sister, she discovers that she has a twelve-year-old niece and that her mother and sister are aiming to get themselves out of the slums where they live by latching onto powerful men.

Kris also gets a chance to meet Vicky Peterwald, the little-known sister of Hank Peterwald who met his fate in the last book. Vicky has a major grudge against Kris and is the author of the assassination attempts. She's supposed to be on the planet to learn from Peterwald agents who are attempting to overthrow the current government in order to take over New Eden. Her actions bring that plot to overthrow the government to Kris's attention and she finally knows why King Ray sent her to New Eden.

However, she doesn't know if she is supposed to stop the revolution or begin it until she finds out the Peterwalds are on the other side. Whatever they want, Kris knows her home planet wants the opposite.

This was another great episode in the Kris Longknife series.

Kris Longknife has made the Rim too hot for her, so her king and Navy boss send her to New Eden as part of a procurement team. The only problem is that Kris knows there is more to her mission than her superiors told her about.

New Eden is an interesting world. It was one of the first settled when people from Earth began to leave the planet. Kris finds a society that is big on secrets and information security. She also finds a stratified society with the rich, original settlers who have the right to vote and all the others whose ancestors might have come to the planet as indentured servants and whose descendants are still disenfranchised.

The government has a lock on the news. Only good news gets reported in the powerful press. Neither of the two assassination attempts on Kris manage to make the news. Gun control is supposed to be absolute with only hired security services allowed to carry. But the security firms don't advertise and need word of mouth recommendations. Getting a permit to carry for herself, her team and even the Marines at the Embassy is not an easy task.

We also learn that New Eden is Abby's home planet - the one she was very glad to leave fifteen years earlier. As she goes looking for her mother and sister, she discovers that she has a twelve-year-old niece and that her mother and sister are aiming to get themselves out of the slums where they live by latching onto powerful men.

Kris also gets a chance to meet Vicky Peterwald, the little-known sister of Hank Peterwald who met his fate in the last book. Vicky has a major grudge against Kris and is the author of the assassination attempts. She's supposed to be on the planet to learn from Peterwald agents who are attempting to overthrow the current government in order to take over New Eden. Her actions bring that plot to overthrow the government to Kris's attention and she finally knows why King Ray sent her to New Eden.

However, she doesn't know if she is supposed to stop the revolution or begin it until she finds out the Peterwalds are on the other side. Whatever they want, Kris knows her home planet wants the opposite.

This was another great episode in the Kris Longknife series.

Kris Longknife has her first independent command. She's been sent to command Naval District 41 orbiting the planet Chance. When she arrives along with Penny, her bodyguard Jack, her maid Abby, and a Naval Chief named Beni, she finds the place empty. She learns that Lieutenant in charge had put in his tweny years and retired - as a lieutenant.

She visits the planet to see what is going on and soon learns that the planet is filled with rugged individualists who don't see the need to have Wardhaven's protection and certainly don't want a Longknife there. A number of the older citizens had served with one or the other of Kris's great-grandfathers and knew that Longknifes were trouble magnets.

But Kris has another issue besides her unstaffed and mothballed station. Her computer Nelly wants to go exploring using some of the maps left by the ancient races that have long disappeared. She sends Penny and Abby off to rent a ship since the only one at the station was state of the art when her Great-Grandpa King Ray took it into battle many, many years ago and is now suitable mainly as a museum.

Their explorations lead to the discovery of a couple of planets with remnants of those long-gone aliens. The first is in poor condition, but the second looks like someone could move in if they could defeat the automated defenses. Determined to bring the news of her discover back to Wardhaven, Kris returns to Naval District 41 to find that four Peterwald ships have come through the jump commanded by Kris's old rival Hank Peterwald. Their goal is to conquer Chance and add it to the Peterwald empire.

Neither Kris nor the citizens of Chance are in favor of this, but both are radically outgunned. Luckily, the brains are on Kris's side. I enjoyed seeing all the different plans that were developed to defeat the Peterwald fleet, hopefully, without bloodshed or lives lost.

This was another great episode in an engaging Space Opera series. I liked seeing how Kris is growing in responsibilities and getting to know herself and her companions.

Lieutenant Kris Longknife finds herself assigned to small, experimental ships designed to protect individual planets and made of the semi-smart metal that was used in an assassination attempt against her. The ships have all sorts of problems from equipment failures to the sheer impossibility of small ships taking on battlecruisers.

Before the problems can be solved, but with some hope in sight, Kris is pulled from the ship and arrested for dereliction of duty. This is a put-up case because her father's enemies have found a way to get him out of power and are using Kris's earlier mission as a way to keep him out.

While awaiting her court martial, her Great-grandfather King Ray sends her on a diplomatic mission to sit with one of his old comrades who is dying and, incidentally, convince her planet to join the United Sentients. She has a fight on her hands when off planet agitators attempt their own takeover of the planet.

Then, when returned home to Wardhaven, Kris learns that the planet's defense fleet have been sent to another potential member planet of the United Sentients just when a battle fleet of unknown origin comes to Wardhaven.

With the new government burying its head in the sand, it is up to Kris and quite a few co-conspirators to get her twelve ships functional and find a way to defeat the invading armada. Luckily, she isn't alone. Her Grandpa Al opens his space repair facilities to her, and she gets help from his crew along with private yacht captains, space tugs, the Army, the Navy, and even the local flying clubs. It is up to twenty-three-year-old Princess Kristine Longknife to meld all these elements together into a cohesive fighting force if she wants her planet to survive.

I enjoyed the planning, conniving, space battles, and soul-searching even while hating the losses of friends that were the inevitable result of the battle.